The present invention generally relates to quality assurance and reliability testing of wireless information devices. More specifically, various embodiments of the present invention relate to one or more apparatuses for quality assurance and reliability testing of RFID tags after the RFID tags are manufactured.
Radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags are increasingly becoming popular forms of identification for livestock, agricultural produce, and other food sources and products. In case of livestock farms, a conventional form of identifying an animal in a livestock herd is attaching a paper tag with an identification number on the animal's body part. If the paper tag is to be associated with the animal's vaccination history or any other pertinent dynamically-changing information, it is common practice to attach little paper tabs containing snippets of information to the paper tag itself, which make livestock farm management cumbersome, outdated, and awkward for any computerized information management of animal-specific and/or farm-specific data.
Using RFID tags to store animal-specific and farm-specific information enables electronic data storage and retrieval using an RFID reader device. Food source information tracking, contamination/disease breakout control, and/or transaction history tracking can be more effective and simplified for a livestock farm or an agricultural producer by using RFID technology and corresponding electronic data storage/retrieval capabilities of today's modern information technology (IT) systems.
In case of livestock animals, such as cows and pigs, RFID tags are often attached to animals' ears or other body parts. Because these livestock animals are mobile and may exhibit certain sleeping habits which often place bending pressure on the exterior packaging of RFID tags, some RFID tags attached to livestock animals tend to experience premature failures. The premature failure rate of RED tags for livestock animals may become a significant issue as the usage of RFID tags become more ubiquitous in livestock farm industry.
In a typical device package (i.e. inlay) for an RFID tag, an RFID chip is bonded to an RFID antenna using adhesive materials (i.e. solder epoxy), which contains electrically conductive materials such as silver paste. The RFID antenna is typically metallic or conductive ink materials imprinted on a base substrate. During the manufacturing process of an RFID tag device package, it is difficult to control and/or accurately monitor viscosity, flux levels, and other physical properties of the adhesive materials dispensed to bonding contact points to prevent irregular or overflow of bonding adhesives. Typically, irregular or overflow of bonding adhesives weakens or even breaks the bonding of the RFID chip and the RFID antenna, if the RFID tag device package is subject to an external bending pressure.
Therefore, it may be desirable to devise an apparatus which enables quality assurance and reliability of each RFID tag by simulating external bending pressures. In addition, it may be desirable to devise a corresponding method to achieve quality assurance and reliability of RFID tags. Furthermore, it may be also desirable to make this apparatus optimized for a high-volume, manufacturing quality assurance environment.